Post 8

Hi, after reading my post from yesterday I realized that quite a few parts might seem unclear and there were a few things I wanted to add. So here's part two of this post.

First off, regarding the chief in Congo and land in Zambia and local populations rights in general. The Lunda chief that Stuart and I met with is not some person wielding a spear and dressed in whatever traditional clothing might have been. He's an older guy, dressed in pants and a buttoned down shirt. He had a cane and his house was quite unassuming. In Zambia all the land, outside of the big cities, pretty much belongs to a chief of the local tribe. In order to buy land in Zambia you have to first deal with the local chief and come to some kind of understanding, usually monetary, and than deal with the Zambian authorities. That's just the way it works, and I believe it is similar in Malawi, Mozambique, and I imagine most of the countries I'll visit.

When Stuart went to visit him it was mostly to discuss what kind of monetary arrangement was to be put in place regarding the splitting of game hunting revenue at Nkwaji and to have some input into which local people would be employed. If you don't go through the chief than you're going to have problems, although the people who the chief chooses know they don't have to work too hard because they have his backing. It's not the most conducive policy to getting things done fast, but it's kind of the only way to go about doing things.

The other thing I wanted to clarify a little more was the location of the farm and Nkwaji site. There is a tri border area with Zambia, Congo, and Angola and both of the sites are within a few kilometers of the triple border. You can easily drive into Angola or Congo without realizing it, and there are kind of token border agents at one post only, so it's basically accepted that people will go back and forth as they choose. For the most part the people who pass the border are the Lunda, who historically have lived in the region and the borders put in place by colonial powers had no logic to it. It divided up their people, and they don't really view the border as defining their nationality. They're Lunda first, and whatever country was imposed upon them second.

I also forgot to write about how nice the Lunda people I met were. Most did not speak any English, but there were several that spoke quite well. Everyone was quite friendly, although it's a little unnerving that they viewed me, because of my association with Stuart, as a boss. They greeted me like bwana, or master/boss/chief, which meant a half kneel and they bowed their heads to me upon the initial greeting. I felt half like a slave master, reminding me of a little like the family I first lived with in Salvador, Brazil, where there were three servants living in the house. Anyways, very nice people, although Malawi still takes the cake. From everything I've heard Malawians are the nicest people that I'll meet on this trip.

I also read quite a bit over the last week. I did a few book exchanges while at the hostel in Lusaka and also bought a book. I read Bill Bryson's A History of Nearly Everything which I strongly recommend. He basically gives a history of all of science, and does it in his very witty writing style. He's just an amazing author and can make any subject a fascinating read. I bought a book called Gun, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He's a UCLA professor of Geography and this book is about how it came to be that some peoples conquered others. He tries to make this discussion scientific and quantitative and show through facts how it came to be that the Incas were conquered by europeans and not the other way around amongst other examples. He shows how available crops, animals, population density, and disease explain it all. It's interesting, but it takes 600 some pages for him to explain it all. He could have condensed it a bit more in my opinion, but still an interesting book. I also read a Toni Morrison book, Paradise, which I think I liked. I'm not sure I get it, and if anyone's read it, please let me know. It was also really nice to just read, something I haven't done anywhere near enough of in recent months.

Finally, a little more about Zambia. One telling sign for me is a billboard in Lusaka for a bank. It says "If you think you have to use bribery to do business in Zambia, think again" That a bank uses this idea shows how pervasive bribery is here. From what I understand from talking with Stuart, the family that owns Hillwood farm, and a few other folks its just understood that without bribes nothing gets done. This is why I don't see Zambia becoming the Chile of Africa. Not that Chile is without corruption, but the country prides itself on its relatively low levels of corruption. Its police force may be the least corrupt in the world. Too much of the copper money in Zambia will just dissapear and prevent the country from realizing its potential. Zambia also has huge agricultural potential with vast areas of land suitable for all sorts of crops, but its potential is far from being realized. There is no capital to start this up, and not enough trained workers as well. Many of the white farmers from Zimbabwe have moved to Zambia to start farms, so this is changing a little, but not enough. Zambia should be able to feed the continent, yet in all but a few years of its history since indepedence in the 60's its had to recieve food aid. Another ridiculous issue regarding this is that it sells a lot of its maize to the Congo. The price for maize in the Congo is five times that of Zambia, so instead of feeding its own people, the country sells huge amount of its food to their neighbor. Who knows where this money goes, but I sincerely doubt as much goes back into govt. projects as it should. The country can also get away with this, because the UN, World Food Programme, and other groups pump food aid into the country. They can't tell Zambia to stop selling its food and feed its own people, because they Zambia won't and if they stop giving food aid it only means people will starve, not that Zambia will start feeding itself. A similar story happens in quite a few different countries in the area, and one of the reasons I'm becoming really disallusioned with all of these foreign aid groups. I'm not blaming the food aid groups, because its really the government corruption that creates the situation, but their existence makes it a lot eaiser for the government to put more money in their pockets knowing there will always be the aid groups to pick up the slack.

Well, I'm going to go to Victoria Falls in a few hours, and tomorrow I'll be at the falls. When I'm done at the falls I'm going to take a few crazy bus rides all the way to the northern tip of the country to Mpulungu. From there I take a boat on Lake Tanganyika to a chimpanzee park in Tanzania with the largest population of chimps in the world. Its' a really remote park, and I'm excited to hike around there for a few days. The boat only leaves on Friday, so I'm going to spend almost a week in the Mpulungu area exploring the Zambian side of the lake. There are some other huge waterfalls and nice hiking. I'm told there's good internet connections there so I'll try to load pictures when I get to Mpulungu, if not when I get out of the Tanzania park to its lake port city of Kigoma in a few weeks.

Tchau, B